Unbroken
by Imp
Summary: What happens to faith, or hope, when darkness seems to obscure everything? Bitterness easily overcomes all else when suffering seems to prevail... (Note:Do you know I hate genres? Bloody confusing...)


Unbroken

By Imp

A/N: I don't know about this. It's set some time _after_ X2 I suppose; things haven't gone so well with the mutants. You'll have to judge for yourself – it's rather an experiment. Nightcrawler speaks with Storm – not romance, thank goodness, though you could read that into it, maybe. 

~

"Why do you keep coming here?" A voice echoed in the thick silence of the church. 

It was quiet, dark; no mass would be said there for many hours yet and all light but the ever-present red glow of the tabernacle lamp was extinguished. It was good this way, empty of people, dark, quiet – no one to scream, no one to stare…no one to send you from that peace, that place of consolation…

A woman stood in the shadows, dark-clad, all but invisible except for her hair, strangely white, shining in the dim light. She stood tense, angry, unable to feel peace, unable to find consolation in the cold stone walls and slight glow of the lamp; it was all dead to her, another building, another place to be hated. 

The bent figure, kneeling, did not turn, only the slightest movement, stiffening perhaps at the suddenness of the sound in the silence, betrayed his surprise.

The red light flickered, gleaming on the gold of the altar cloth, dancing over the pews, and the grayish hands, clutching a crucifix.

"Why here, Kurt?" Storm repeated. "_They_ don't want you here. You'll be caught one time – in the alley, in the street – we've lost too many, seen on the sidewalk, followed to the school... Why?"

There was a silence, stretching out into the dark until it seemed like all words, answers, replies, were lost in it.

"Christ is here." Came the quiet reply at last, and then, "It is very dark outside,"

The woman frowned, eyes flashing bitterly, but when she spoke her voice was not harsh; it rang more with grief than with hate, choked by anger that melted into a deathly sadness. 

"Praying, praying…" she murmured, despair in her voice, bitterness in her gaze. "It's long too late for that. The school's abandoned, we're all in hiding because of the damned registration act – the people are out for our blood because of Magneto's stupid tricks – and you risk your life to come to a dark building where you can't show your face during the day! Why?"

Again long silence. Kurt Wagner bowed his head, the gold cornea of his eyes gleaming briefly in the red light and his hand grasped the small crucifix tightly.

"You followed me?" he said at last, wearily, questioning.

"We lost Scott, they almost got Logan -…" Storm's voice again became bitter; she gestured sharply at the cross. "If _He_ listens why are we still hunted like monsters?"

"I do not know!" the hand over the crucifix tightened yet again until the knuckles were white. "It would not be for me to judge vhat He does…" he continued more quietly, "For if He is God He knows all ends, He knows why we suffer; _He_ knows – I do not." He ended for his voice was breaking.

"He knows? Yet He lets it go on,"

"He let his Son die on the cross." Storm saw the man's shoulders rise as he took a breath, straightening somewhat. "You are still very angry,"

"I've survived being angry." She snapped. "Scott gave into his grief and you know what happened to him. Faith won't pull you through this, Kurt; sneaking into this church at night will get you killed – or worse dragged off to some government testing facility."

"Perhaps…" the mutant's blue complexion looked grey, for more reasons than the lack of light. "Perhaps I am not only trying to survive."

Storm stopped. She seemed to be trying to speak, trying to think of how, unable to drop her anger and say what she wished to.

"Yes I was angry – " she murmured sharply. "I _am_ angry," she said, voice becoming more firm, yet strained in an inexplicable way, abandoning whatever she had wanted to say. "Angry at everyone and everything that persecutes me for my difference. Angry at everyone who's responsible for Jean's death – angry at everyone who has looked at me or my friends and said 'O God what is that thing?' I hate them! But I've survived them. All of them, Kurt. What happened to Stryker? What happened to every – " she broke into a string of curses and a spasm of pain crossed Nightcrawler's face. 

"They're all dead – " she went on, and now she seemed almost as though she were defending herself, her anger, to the empty pews and silent crucifix above the altar. "I survived – not by praying – or hoping – …" she trailed off abruptly, gazing by some twist of fate up at the altar and the prone figure upon the crucifix.

There was silence again and the words hung in the thick darkness within the church, frozen in time, contemplated.

"They hated you too, I think," Nightcrawler spoke at last, sadly.

Storm began to speak, and then hesitated, faltering between her hate and grief. Her thin shadow seemed to waver, shivering between the dark at the door, and the pale reddish light, glowing, swaying over the bent form of the man, flickering across the floor in dancing patterns. And then she took one step forward, hand outstretched toward Kurt Wagner's shoulder not quite daring to touch.

"What do you see?" she asked searchingly, gazing fixedly at the blank darkness. "I see nothing but anger and dark. In death, in life…brokenness… I see the uselessness of praying, the uselessness of that broken body on the cross, the uselessness of …everything. Why pray – _why hope?_ There's nothing there to look to – nothing to hope for!"

"I know vhat it looks like…" murmured Kurt, after a brief silence, tone distant as if his soul were quite far away. "It must have looked very much the same at the foot of the cross." A tear broke upon the cold stones of the floor, its warmth absorbed by the cold slate.

"Just tell me – tell me, Kurt – _why?_" her voice broke now. She wanted so much to see, but could not bring herself to raise her head. She wanted to be found, but could not leave the safety of being lost. She wanted to be safe as child in its mother's arms, but could not bring herself to bend to be embraced. And Kurt Wagner remained silent, gazing unseeing at the light flickering along the floor, lips moving in whispered prayer.

"Bitte…hilf mir…Vater…" 

The woman's extended hand wavered and then slowly, almost desperately touched Nightcrawler's shoulder, pleading an answer in her uncertainty.

"…He commanded that we not despair, for such is doubting Him…" Kurt responded at last. "And then – is it not also foolish to give up – vhen we cannot see the end? It all looks very dark here…" he shuddered, faltering. Yes, it did look very dark…or… It seemed he could see glaring light, blinding, voices, screams…feel hard hands, taste blood – the hand on his shoulder moved, tightened slightly and before him swung the lamp, weak, small but constant. 

"…perhaps we are only vaiting for the sun to rise, and do not know the hour of the dawn." His hand strayed down to the beads hanging from his belt, and his eyes closed. It was dark, so dark. Yet some where in the black despair was hope, and so in the dark some  where there was light, small, weak, but constant. Behind him Storm stood, a statue, gazing intently but distantly at an actual statue in an alcove of the wall.

The pale body of the crucified Christ lay broken upon the ground, and His mother knelt over him, face streaked with tears, twisted by desperate grief, gazing upwards, her Son's pierced and bloody hand clutched in her own frail grip. But in her eyes was neither anger nor despair, only crushing grief, and some form of faith, unbroken even to the sight of her Child's tortured corpse.

~

A/N: The end! Or I believe so. Again it's rather an experiment – so any comments, thoughts? Criticism, which it probably deserves in some way – everything does. 

And as an extra note: thanks to my reviewers of "Abandoned Sanctuary" – in particular Starfish for the German correction, and the Phantom, Kellen, and likely some others that I've forgotten – for their thoughts and notes on my writing and such. ^_^  Toodles -IMP


End file.
